Yes, Nick Cannon Can Do Whiteface. No, You Can’t Do Blackface.

America’s Got Talent host and permanent Nickelodeon star (in my brain, at least) Nick Cannon is in hot water after he posted some photos on his Instagram that made a bunch of people throw a fit. Was he promoting violence? Nay. Objectifying women? Nope. So what could it possibly have been?

He wore whiteface.

Nick Cannon wore whiteface.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Okay, so here’s the rundown: Nick Cannon presumably had a makeup artist put a bunch of makeup on his face, making him effectively look like a 19-year-old white kid whom he’s called “Connor Smallnut.” This was in order to promote his album “White People Party Music.” The photos are mildly terrifying.

You get the gist. Basically, white people are freaking out over the “double standards” involved in whiteface versus blackface, and crying about how Julianne Hough was criticized after she wore blackface for Halloween. But hey! Everyone deserves an explanation. Here’s why it’s different, as per the RacismSchool Tumblr:

Blackface was used by white people to entertain other white people, the dominant and privileged group.

Racism was ingrained in our legal system at the time when blackface was most popular.

Blackface was done as a caricature of black people. It influenced how audiences saw people of color at the time; whiteface hasn’t had an extremely detrimental effect on how the world sees white people. White blonde women didn’t suffer an image crisis after White Chicks.

Nick Cannon wasn’t being racist when he did whiteface. Yes, he was (and is) being stupid, because this was a stupid means by which to publicize an album and also why the eff is Nick Cannon making another album?, but that’s besides the point. You cannot ignore the history behind blackface or claim “reverse racism” because tada! Reverse racism doesn’t exist. (Of course, if you are a time traveler and choose to use your powers to swap out white people as the dominant group, then yes, you’ll be reversing racism, sort of.)

Cannon pulled a dumb move in an attempt to snag publicity. “Connor Smallnut” looks unreasonably creepy and has the creamy pinkish complexion of a Pepto Bismal bottle, and that’s weird. And doing Instagram captions with that many lengthy hashtags is a crime in itself. Basically, he’s just trying to get a bunch of attention for his album and that’s…fine. Whatever. That said, he’s not being racist; he’s just being stupid.